Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood

Author, narrator, and protagonist of Lost Names, Richard E. Kim is a young boy growing up in Japanese-occupied Korea. Like his father, Kim is highly principled and cares deeply for his country and the suffering of his people, even from a young age. Because he is unwilling to compromise his ideals, Kim often suffers at the hands of the Japanese teachers in his school. He is punched in the face on his first day of school in Korea for singing in English, and he is savagely beaten with a wooden sword by a gym teacher. Experiences such as this cause Kim to view Han and the actions of the older generations as distasteful and shameful. He wants to seize the opportunity to resist Japanese control to build a viable future for Koreans.

Kim is a natural leader. He easily attracts friends and followers at school, and he becomes class leader—a position he maintains, despite the extra work it entails. He feels ashamed at coming from a position of wealth and refuses to eat white rice in front of his classmates. Because of the military-style drilling he undergoes in the Japanese-run school system, Kim is able to organize a strategy to retake the town after the Japanese surrender. Mr. Kim respects his opinion and seems to take what Kim says to hart. Though he is only 13 by the end of Lost Names, he is on his way to participating in the reconstruction of his country together with his father’s and grandfather’s generations.